Gratitude: a Stepping Stone to a More Mindful Life
Listen to this post as a podcast:
Gratitude: A Stepping Stone to a More Mindful Life
Hi, it’s me, Stef, again. Here to talk to you about parenting differently with gratitude. I am obsessed with gratitude because it has changed how I view the world. I grew up in New England, so I celebrated the negative. It’s kind of hard to describe how a cultural mindset works, but in Massachusetts, where I am from, it’s pretty acceptable to be super negative, sarcastic, and self-deprecating.
First of all, not all of the Northeast is filled with pessimists, but I assure you that optimists are not the norm. You have to be hard to make it through the winter, and you have to be tough to fight for what you want. The world is not out to help you - the world is out to get you - and don't you dare show anyone that you can fall.
Of course, the world is not out to “get” a middle-class white girl from Massachusetts, even if she grew up in a small rural town. This is just another worldview - there are so many, after all. And so, I grew up with both the luxury of white privilege and the austerity of optimism. Weird? Maybe but if you are from the Northeast, you get it.
So you know my starting viewpoint – even if something went right, it was just law that the other shoe was always gonna drop somehow.
But I’m not like that anymore — and yes, living in California has something to do with it — but you can still be a negative SOB in the Golden State. My worldview has changed. That is what happened when I started to look inside and do the work I needed to do to become a happier human. And the intention was not enough - I DID have to do the work - I just didn’t need to grit my teeth and bear it. Parenting didn’t have to be about reading every book, going to every workshop, and FIGURING THAT $%^& out by myself.
It took action — it took courage — did I want to keep choosing my kids over my well-being or did I want to choose myself first?
Choose yourself first. What does that really mean?
Well, it’s not as simple as taking an afternoon off - motherhood doesn’t work that way - especially in the early years. A “Choose Yourself First” mindset does not mean sacrificing your kids’ happiness for your own. It’s about where you want to put your energy — you’re taking such great care of your kids — but what if you just lessened up a bit on that and started taking care of yourself a little more?
Take a quick second to reflect on the things in your control and see if you like how they are going.
Do you NEED to do everything you’re doing or is that your inner perfectionist at work? Is it society telling you that your kids HAVE to be in sports and that your HAVE to help with PTA and you HAVE to teach your newborn to swim - but do you?
You get to decide for yourself if the events and/or people in your life support or deteriorate your well-being. You don’t need to sacrifice yourself for other people’s or cultural opinions.
Let’s take a look at my well-being success formula it’s:
INTENTION + ATTENTION + ACTION + REPETITION = RESULTS
And here we are talking about attention - where is most of your’s going?
Yeah, it’s your kids, duh, I know.
Let's talk about why gratitude could be the right action for parenting in the first place.
Every mother dreams about becoming less triggered by her kids; some of us yell, some give up – we all flood with overwhelm. Unfortunately, most parenting advice assumes we can break out of these habitual reactions without learning the skills to get there.
Those preliminary cycle-breaking skills are crucial because we can't take any advice without getting to what I call "The Juicy Pause" – or that moment right before we react. We are always reading these books and trying these things and failing! Because they take patience, we just don’t have. I remember when I was a toddler parent how much I wished I could have more patience - like it was the key to everything when in reality, it was how quickly I went to reaction town that was keeping me from succeeding, I got triggered when my child didn’t respond to a new technique right away I modeled back their emotions and they slapped me in the face or laughed, I walked out of the room to have a time out and they followed me screaming, and so I screamed back. Nothing would stick, and it wasn’t because I was impatient - it was because I was TRIGGERED.
My reactions were emotional - not thoughtful.
How would I learn to be a better parent if I couldn’t stop myself from yelling at my child in the first place? I had to break some pretty deeply entrenched habits. Ones that had been modeled to me as a child and probably even modeled to my parents as children.
To take the advice of so many well-meaning child experts out there, we have to expand the pause - the moment right before we are triggered, and the only way to do that is to learn to become more present, to notice there is a pause, to begin with.
We need a more mindful approach to parenting growth, one that I believe starts with a committed, daily practice of gratitude.
Dan Harris, ABC correspondent and author of 10% Happier, has famously said, “I do meditation because it makes me 10 percent happier.” I feel the same about gratitude.
It won’t fix your whole life - but after a few weeks, you will feel the subtle shift from how you used to think, feel and behave to the way you do now - and let me tell you, your kids will approve.
And so I hope you stick with me as we plod deeper into this idea of Parenting Differently with Gratitude because the benefits make it worth it. Your self-doubt and Mom Guilt softens away, you become more connected to your friends and community, and you arrive right here in the present moment where your kids already live.
What will you do to choose yourself this week? Well, I hope you will start writing that list each morning. And if you haven’t downloaded our mantra of the week, it is a perfect reminder you can put right there on your phone screen: Taking action is a gift to myself.
And don’t forget - you are already a Good AF mom.
Other posts on Gratitude:
